As part of our effort to continuously improve the PDF export function of our M44 scenario editor, effective immediately we are now using the following naming, title and sub-title conventions for ALL Memoir '44 scenarios:

When you have a Title alone, such as Pegasus Bridge, it must go in the Scenario Name field of the editor.

The title will then appear, justified to the left, in large reddish capital letters at the top of your scenario. On the same line, but in smaller type and justified to the right of the page, will be the date that you entered into the Battle Date field in the scenario editor. And on a separate line, in smaller type, the Scenario reference # will appear, justified to the left, below the title. (Note; These stupid browsers do not let us justify things properly, but they ARE justified correctly in the PDF output).

So overall it will look like this:

SCENARIO TITLE Date
Scenario # -

ie

PEGASUS BRIDGE JUNE 6, 1944
01

If your scenario depicts an Operation or Battle with no other reference (ie the scenario depicts the whole Operation, not a smaller sub-action within that context), then the Scenario Name field is where you should put Operation xxx, and the sub-title field should be left blank.

For example:

OPERATION GOODWOOD JUNE 18-20, 1944
18A

When you have a qualifier, such as the Operation, Campaign or Battle to which the sub-action depicted in your scenario belongs, or a geographical region you would like to specify, this qualifier should go into the subtitle section, as follows

SPECIFIC SCENARIO TITLE Date
Scenario # - Subtitle (Operation or Battle to which the scenario belongs, or geographical region)

For instance:

FIRST ASSAULT WAVE JUNE 6, 1944
05 - OMAHA BEACH

COUNTERATTACK ON MORTAIN AUGUST 7, 1944
09 - UNTERNEHMEN LÜTTICH

VASSIEUX JULY 24, 1944
07 - VERCORS

TOULON AUGUST 20-26, 1944
10 - CAMPAIGN FOR SOUTHERN FRANCE

Note that in the PDF output, the date will now be aligned with the TITLE and in the same reddish color, as the date refers to that specific scenario, not necessarily to the larger campaign/operation in the subtitle.

In addition, when the operation is a German one you should use the German word for 'Operation" in the title, ie Unternehmen Lüttich, not Operation Lüttich; for russian campaigns, the correct word is Operatsiya, such as in Operatsiya Bagration; and for japanese campaigns, the correct word is Sakusen and the order of the words need to be inverted, such as in Mo Sakusen (Operation Mo).

Finally, when you need to make notes about a scenario (such as notes regarding the help someone might have given you to playtest or translate the scenario, or specific game elements required, or any other type of notes) please make these in the Scenario Bibliography field of the scenario, NOT in the Sub-title area.

The later update of the PDF Export function of the scenario editor that went out this morning now assumes that all scenarios will follow the above described conventions. This means that all scenario titles should now be in the above defined format (rather than the old format) in order to print properly. To that effect, we have already modified every single one of the official scenarios published to date, in both French and English.

Contributors to the Scenarios from the Front section (SFTF# scenarios) should try and update the titles of their own creations to the above described naming conventions. This will help ensure a smoother PDF output for everyone involved.

We thank you in advance for your help in helping us make this a better tool for everyone.

thank you,
The M44 coders

ps: As always, if you find some glitches (for scenarios that are properly titled to the new format), please let us know by posting bug reports in the appropriate forum thread.

I have renamed my scenarios, but in the process of doing this I noticed a couple of scenarios had the "this setup is not possible with the tiles provided" warning that they never had before, 1618U and 1743U. The scenario verification page suggests everything is fine. Is there a bug here?

Just be careful, please! Part of our motivation for this is to solve the issue of over-long titles, so if you start putting back an Operation AND a battle in the sub-title, it kind of defeats the purpose

I have renamed my scenarios, but in the process of doing this I noticed a couple of scenarios had the "this setup is not possible with the tiles provided" warning that they never had before, 1618U and 1743U. The scenario verification page suggests everything is fine. Is there a bug here?

Just be careful, please! Part of our motivation for this is to solve the issue of over-long titles, so if you start putting back an Operation AND a battle in the sub-title, it kind of defeats the purpose

I assume you mean for PDF output? I've tested out the names above (as well as even longer versions) and find they work quite well.

It seems that the Scenario Name needs to be relatively short but the subtitle allows for quite a few characters.

I have renamed my scenarios, but in the process of doing this I noticed a couple of scenarios had the "this setup is not possible with the tiles provided" warning that they never had before, 1618U and 1743U. The scenario verification page suggests everything is fine. Is there a bug here?

Hmm, strange. We will check this asap.

eric

Were you actually successful in setting up your scenario on the board using only the original box and the terrain pack.
To simplify the player setup experience, we actually merged the "almost impossible" with the "impossible" validation checks.
We basically tightened up the scenario validation criteria.

If you are able to setup scenarios 1618 and 1743 easily placing the tiles in the order suggested, then there is a bug indeed; if you cannot do it or it takes you way too much time, there is no bug to speak off (ie we tried to put the settings at a below Rubik's Cube level of complexity ).

Mik is suggesting it's impossible to set up one of the scenarios. If it's the case that a scenario is impossible to set up, rather than being simply very difficult, shouldn't the verification page be telling me so (and have been telling me so from the outset)?

I tend to playtest on Vassal so I may not have ever actually laid out the tiles for these scenarios on a real board! I'll try to do that tonight.

There's still some (IMHO) unnecessary text in scenario name subtitles. WBC1 in scenario 28 and Eastern Front and Pacific Theater in scenarios with no other operation or battle listed in respective expansion.

The Russian word for operation is "Operatsiya" as Eric has already pointed out, but is "Operatsiya Little Saturn" acceptable, or is there an expectation that scenario designers should find the actual phonetic representation of, say, the Russian phrase 'little saturn'???